Shoes Were For Sunday by Molly Weir

entitled me to obtain three or four splendid cardboard boxes containing spanking new shoes, and that nothing was marked ‘in the book’ until we had made our decision. The excitement of trying to persuade Grannie to have the ones with the buckles, which she instantly dismissed as far too frivolous, and the responsibility of taking back the ones she didn’t want, and then, and only then, having the price marked in the book, had me fairly bursting with importance and a sense of occasion.
    When it was our turn to have shoes bought for us, shoes which we wore only on Sundays, we were taken to the central branch, at the other end of Springburn, where there was a bigger selection. How proud we felt as we sat on squeaking chairs, only to be whisked out of them the moment an adult was seen to be standing.My mother stood no nonsense, but we didn’t mind. Sitting or standing, we entered into the full drama of each stranger’s purchase with as keen an interest as though the shoes were for our own feet. We criticized the quality, the colour, the price, the suitability of the shoe for its purpose. Nobody felt rushed, for we all knew that shoes had to last for a very long time, and money was scarce and we couldn’t afford to make a mistake. When our turn came we tried to kick our battered and scuffed old boots under the chair out of sight. How shaming they seemed compared with the splendid new leather which now stiffly encased our feet. But their scuffed comfort lent wings to our feet as we ran home with our new shoe-box, and climbed on to a chair to lay the new shoes reverently on top of the wardrobe, out of harm’s way until we drew them on on Sunday when we went to church.
    There was a Co-op about every five hundred yards in our district, but you got to know your own Co-op as though it were a club, and how alien other Co-ops seemed if you were sent there by a neighbour. But your own! Ah, that was different. So cosy. So chummy. The girl clerks in our Co-op lent me a new pen nib, shiny and smooth, for each school examination, and later for those I sat at college, and they rejoiced in my successes all the more because they had supplied the nibs which had written the answers.
    They actually encouraged me to act my little stories as I waited my turn. This was amazing to me, forGrannie discouraged ‘showing off’ and described me as ‘a Jezebel’ if I dared imitate anything I had seen on the screen at Saturday matinées. And I found the packed Co-op a marvellous source of fun when I’d play practical jokes, the favourite being covering myself with sparkling frost and running in, panting, as though for shelter, pretending it was pelting with rain. This was especially mystifying when the sun was shining, but in our temperamental climate the trick worked every time, to my joy.
    But for certain items my mother had her favourite shops, and I felt positively breathless with patronage as I went into those little specialized establishments. The one nearest our home was owned by a father and two daughters. The father was dark and saturnine, and the daughters placid, plump and fair. The father looked permanently in a seething temper. He probably had a bad stomach, but we took him as we found him and decided he was just naturally bad-tempered. ‘Mean as get out,’ my mother assured us. ‘He’d take a currant off the scale to make sure you didn’t get a skin over weight.’ But his home-cooked boiled beef ham was her passion, and his spiced pork delicious. I was fascinated to watch him shake the spice from a canister with a pierced lid, and my mouth watered as I raced home, hardly able to wait to get my tiny portion spread on bread and margarine, and savour this aromatic food. I always liked it when the daughter with her hair done up in earphones served me. She was dreamy and far-away and quitecapable of ignoring her father’s sharp glance as the scale wavered past the quarter-pound to give me an extra half-slice with my order. Oh that